Billboard sitting stage show teaser to Zelker film

Easton-area based filmmaker Zeke Zelker isn't exaggerating when he calls his latest project an example of "immersive storytelling."

The staged production of "The Great WTYT960 Billboard Sitting Contest Live!" at the State Theatre on Thursday Nov. 7 is one part of a transmedia event that includes a feature film, web series and an Internet radio station. This week another layer was added when a sitter took up residence on a promotional billboard in Palmer Township to raise money for a local charity.

If you turn up at the State Theatre, you can expect to see actors performing a play based on the upcoming web series about the lives of billboard sitters. But in this play there will be interaction from DJs and audience participation in the spirit of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

On top of that, audience members will also be able affect the story by participating with the characters via social media. The audience will be able to follow the interaction via a Tweet deck on stage.

"It's going to be mayhem," Zelker says with a laugh. "No, maybe not mayhem. But it's going to be very high energy. It's going to be thought-provoking and engaging. I think people will walk away saying 'Holy s-t! What just happened to me!' It'll be fun."

Driving the entire project is the forthcoming movie "Billboard: An Uncommon Contest for Common People!," that Zelker plans to shoot next year, more than a decade after he first got the idea for the project.

In "Billboard," a struggling radio station called WTYT960 is running a contest that dangles a mobile home and "nine-sixty" thousand dollars in front of its contestants. To win the prizes, four strangers have to try to outlast each other by living on a billboard 20 feet above ground. The catwalk where the contenders reside is a mere 10 feet wide by 40 feet long.

Zelker says "Billboard" is, among other things, a story of survival.

"The [movie will be] a very interesting study on where we are at as a society in terms of technology, and what happens when you remove that technology," says Zelker, 43, who lives in Forks Township. "I think it's also an interesting take on how the different socio-economic backgrounds of each of the characters affects how they're able to survive."

If this all sounds a little familiar that's because you probably remember the billboard contest run by WSAN-AM in the '80s. Three men climbed up on a billboard near MacArthur Road and Route 22 in Whitehall and attempted to outlast each other for the prize of a modular home.

The competition, which drew national media attention, lasted 261 days, from Sept. 20, 1982 until June 7, 1983. One of the contestants was arrested on drug charges and disqualified. The two remaining contenders each wound up receiving a modular home and a car.

Zelker remembers the WSAN challenge but says he never attempted to purchase the rights or research the event. "I didn't want to do [the real] story," he says. "This is a completely different story based on a similar premise."

Zelker says his film will be as much about the characters at the radio station as the contestants on the billboard, which is why one of his first steps in the filmmaking process was to establish a real Internet radio station, WTYT960.

The station works this way: Bands upload and promote their own music. The more the music is promoted, the more often the music gets on the playlist. Zelker says more than 400 bands from all over the world have submitted music.

The station has served a number of purposes. Zelker says it's a way for him to discover potential music for the movie. And he's using it as a casting tool — actors were encouraged to create their own contestant videos explaining why they'd make a good participant in the billboard competition.

The stage show came about as Zelker was planning the web series, scheduled to be released next year on Hulu. Zelker says Hulu needed "proof of concept," and that led him to encapsulate the plot in the stage show.